Say Anything Blog

I’m off to Washington DC for a few days to attend the Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream summit.  I attended this event last year as well, and I’m looking forward to being in attendance again.

What’s interesting is that last year when I attended the event I got to see John McCain speak live for the first (and only) time.  At the time he was a long-shot for the nomination, and this is what I had to say:

McCain himself seemed...very tired.  Lethargic even.  Like he’s at the bitter end of a very tough campaign (which, in fact, he is).  He mouthed some things about fiscal conservatism, invoked Reagan and even got off a good one-liner about how he’d be about to win the Presidency if he looked like [South Dakota Senator] John Thune.  But ultimately the crowd’s cheering and applause to McCain’s speech seemed...strained.  Like they wanted to believe what he was saying, but weren’t quite sure if he actually meant it all.

Which is sort of the problem with McCain anyway, isn’t it?

At the time it seemed impossible to me that McCain could be the nominee.  At even today, at times, it still seems impossible.  He wasn’t a good candidate then, and he isn’t a good candidate now.

In fact, these days it seems like the best argument anyone can say in favor of McCain is that, relative to Barack Obama, he’s a conservative.  But the answer to that argument is that we’d have been better off nominating someone who is actually conservative, not just conservative when compared to his liberal opposition.